AVQ&A: Music arguments

Welcome back to AVQ&A;, where we throw out a
question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to
compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing
tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to
convene here together. Got a question you'd like us and the readers to answer?
E-mail us at avcqa@theonion.com.

Keith Phipps

That's an easy one: Any album by Steely Dan. I adore them. My wife
makes a face whenever she hears Donald Fagen's voice. At least I understand
where she's coming from. I used to be a Dan doubter too. Then, thanks to the
insistence of a friend, I gave a whole album a chance—the great Pretzel
Logic—and
got it. The fussy perfectionism, the mean romantic lyrics about burnouts and
dead-enders, the instrumental alacrity, and the emotional messiness all
balanced like elements on a Calder mobile. I've never looked back, but out of
the courtesy of those yet to make the breakthrough, I mostly keep the Dan
confined to my headphones, and bump them loudly on solo car trips. There's
something to be said for private passions.

Josh Modell

I
could spend hours arguing with philistines about the greatness of Bloc Party's
future classic A Weekend In The City, but let me drop an even bigger bombshell (and
chuck my music-crit-cred card out the window at the same time): I think Beach
Boys' Pet Sounds is
just pretty good. Over the years, every time a slobbering tribute is written or
another 25-disc set (featuring the "Brian just farted" mix of
"God Only Knows") comes out, I've given it another shot at entering
my heart and soul. And pretty much every time, I like it, but I don't love it.
It sounds dated to me, and (gasp) kinda samey. I worked at a record store for a
long time, and I used to drive my coworkers crazy by saying that it was the
most overrated album of all time. I didn't necessarily believe that, but it was
fun. But here's one I've had to convince people to listen to, and a record I
listen to 10 times more frequently than Pet Sounds: Best Of Bee Gees. Recorded at roughly the
same time as Pet Sounds (the
mid-to-late '60s), the first three Bee Gees albums (whose songs make up the
bulk of Best Of)
have nothing to do with the Travolta-powered disco that made them super-duper
famous. Instead, these songs are gorgeous, soulful precursors to slowcore, all
pretty melody and melancholy. Here's "Holiday." Feel it.

Sean O'Neal

I'm
actually kind of disappointed/relieved that Josh stepped in front of the
commenter bus by declaring that he isn't totally in love with Pet Sounds, which is probably the
one album I've wasted the most time and energy arguing over with my obnoxious
audiophile friends, in those conversations that mostly devolve into those
bullshit "The Beach Boys were better than The Beatles" arguments that
nobody ever wins. (Especially you, Troy.) But since I don't want to be a Mr. Me
Too, I'll just say that I've still never figured out why OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The
Love Below
was a such a big fucking deal. The year it came out, it seemed like everybody I
knew—including people who "didn't like hip-hop," and were
mostly into Blevin Blectum and This Heat or whatever—had this in their
car for some reason, and were always bumping "Ghetto Musick" or
"The Way You Move" every time I went over to their house. I just
couldn't fathom why, no matter how many times I had to listen to it (which
ended up being almost daily). Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against
OutKast. I just happen to think pretty much every album the group released before Speakerboxxx was superior. Personally,
I thought splitting those two up, while perhaps logistically necessary,
highlighted their worst individual traits: I found Big Boi's side repetitive
and almost entirely hookless, while Andre's side ("Hey Ya" aside) was
a self-indulgent, sprawling mess of goofy faux-Prince vamping that stopped
being amusing about 30 minutes in, with another 45 to go. Plus the chorus of
"Roses" has some of the most irritating lyrics I've ever heard in my
life outside of a Kid Rock song. ("Roses really smell like poo-poo"?
Seriously?) Whatever "Tomb Of The Boom" is okay, I guess.

Kyle Ryan

Alternative
Press currently has a Fall
Out Boy
cover story, where writer JR Griffin mentions how A.V. Club writer Aaron Burgess was
crucified by "commenting hipsters who are usually preoccupied with
exalting Rilo Kiley and Deerhoof" for giving last year's Infinity On
High a B+. It even quotes
Aaron! "I felt a little awkward about posting such a positive review of
the thing. I don't regret it, though: I still think those first few songs are a
triumph." And he's right. Last year, I converted from FOB naysayer to
unironic fan, and I spent a lot of time pleading the record's case—at one
point to a couple hundred thousand people on WGN Radio. I love pop with my punk
and punk with my pop, and Infinity On High is almost the perfect
amalgam. The numerous hooks quickly become earwigs, and there's a cleverness in
the songwriting that Wentz haters tend to overlook. I understand their
irritation (look at him shirtless in this video, c'mon!), but Infinity On
High is a great pop
record—though Andy and I are probably the only AVC staffers psyched about
the upcoming Folie À Deux.

Jason Heller

Although
I'm known far and wide for being the least argumentative person who's ever
lived, I have somehow found myself arguing about Ride's Tarantula an awful lot over the
years. I don't know exactly why I've felt the need to defend it so much; Tarantula
is far
from the top of my list of favorite albums, and I probably listen to it once a
year at most. I think I'm just sick of what I perceive as the knee-jerk,
blindly followed consensus among Ride fans—that the band stopped being
good after its second album, 1992's Going Blank Again. I'll agree that Ride's
first two albums—which, in a nutshell, combine some of the best bits of
The Cure and My Bloody Valentine—are the essentials of the group's
catalogue. And 1994's Carnival Of Light, made while the group was full of itself
and falling apart, was a spotty descent into class-rock necrophilia. (Although
"Crown Of Creation" is just amazingly gorgeous, a track that could
pass as a love letter from The Stone Roses to CSNY.) Tarantula, Ride's swansong, came
out posthumously in 1996, and it was dismissed out of hand by just about
everyone at the time. The classic rock of the '70s is cool now, but it wasn't
so in vogue among indie-rock and Brit-pop fans back then; Tarantula's blatant nods to Rod
Stewart and Lynyrd Skynyrd alienated all the folks with their noses up the ass
of Pavement and Suede. Essentially a solo album by singer-guitarist Andy Bell
(now the bassist of Oasis), Tarantula is a blob of sadness trapped in amber, a
perfect little sketch of world-weary melancholy that listlessly masters the art
of the pop confessional. From the opening detonation of "Black Nite
Crash" to the beachfront comedown of "Starlight Motel," Tarantula instantly got to
me—and then I became really bummed when I discovered I was the only one I
knew who liked it. (The critics, of course, savaged it, too.) The older I get
and the more crappy, shallow, clueless new indie bands I have to subject myself
to, the richer this disc sounds. When I still wander into an occasional discussion
about Tarantula,
it's always with someone who hasn't listened to the album since it came out
back in '96. I always cram this last word into the argument before stomping off
like a whiny brat: "Go back and listen to Tarantula again, then we'll talk."

Nathan
Rabin

I
bitterly contest my colleague Jason Heller's contention that he is the least
argumentative person who's ever lived. I am clearly the least argumentative
person that ever lived, and am wholly prepared to fly to wherever Mr. Heller
lives and engage in a spirited round of fisticuffs to settle the matter. So I
rarely get into arguments about records. In the summer of 2003, however, I felt
like I was locked in a bitter ongoing argument with the culture at large
concerning the merits of 50 Cent's ubiquitous, critically acclaimed,
bazillion-selling major-label debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. The culture at large insisted that it was gangsta
rap's most infectious, undeniable masterpiece since The Chronic. I, on the other hand,
found it joyless, pandering, and wildly uneven. I seemed to be the only human
in existence immune to the charms of "In Da Club." That song was
everywhere in 2003, taunting me endlessly with its mind-boggling ubiquity. It
blared from every passing car, could be heard from every club, and dominated
ringtones. Yet I found the song dreary and depressingly indicative of Dr. Dre's
fading production skills. Dre's early work boasted a density, wit, and
sophistication worthy of the Bomb Squad. But by the time "In Da Club"
rolled around, he'd embraced a lazy, reductive minimalism. True, the album was
almost undeniably better than the dismissive review I gave it in these here
pages, but a couple of good songs (my
favorite being the brutally funny "Back Down") do not a masterpiece
make. To be honest, I liked the confusingly titled, unashamedly poppy
soundtrack to Get Rich Or Die Tryin' better than 50's supposed masterpiece.

Matthew Borlik

Gang
Of Four's
1979 debut album Entertainment!is unquestionably one of the most definitive
post-punk records of its era, but I've always maintained that the band's 1981
follow-up, Solid Gold, is the superior album. (Other British post-punk bands of the
time—Wire, The Raincoats, Au Pairs—also drifted to moodier, more
introspective territory for their second records, but Gang Of Four's shift was
the most jarring.) "Paralyzed," Solid Gold's sparse, plodding
opening track—and the perfect background music for any slump-shouldered
office drone shuffling his or her way to work in the morning—makes it
clear from the get-go that the band had moved past producing upbeat tracks such
as Entertainment!'s
"Not Great Men," "I Found That Essence Rare," and "At
Home He's A Tourist." In fact, the only song on Solid Gold to hit the singles charts
was "What We All Want"—as somber a dance track as there
is—in which vocalist Jon King asks, "Could I be happy with something
else?" (A shame, really, seeing as how other songs, such as "Why Theory?"
and "Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time" show that the band had
lost none of its ability to make audiences simultaneously move their asses and
flex their minds, even if King and company were more sullen about it this time
around.) Apparently, Gang Of Four was happier with making the charts more
often: Later, more slickly-produced songs such as "To Hell With
Poverty!," "I Love A Man In Uniform," and "Is It
Love?" were obviously written with the dance floor in mind. Though I would
concede that Entertainment! is the more consistent record in terms of quality
(Solid Gold's
B-side has its share of clunkers, including "The Republic" and the
closer "He'd Send In The Army"), the high points of Gang Of Four's
sophomore effort eclipse those of its debut—an impressive feat, given Entertainment!'s many moments of shining
brilliance, and enough to earn Solid Gold my vote.

Steven Hyden

I had no idea how many people read The
A.V. Club's year-end best-of music lists until I started getting random
emails from friends wondering how the hell I could include Justin
Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds on my 2006 list. While
Timberlake has acquired a small mountain of critical capital since leaving N'
Sync, there are still plenty of dudes who will accuse you of being a
chest-waxer for thinking "Sexy Back" is a great song. Which is pretty
moronic, because FutureSex/LoveSounds is the kind of record any real
music fan should, at the very least, respect—it's an accomplished, weird,
overly ambitious work that's bursting with (mostly good) ideas, made by one the
leading lights of his chosen genre. According to some tastes, the record
automatically sucks simply because it's "mainstream pop." That's fine, but
not really a compelling argument for why I or anybody else shouldn't love it.
Of course, this didn't prevent my friends from giving me tons of shit for
calling FutureSex/LoveSounds one of the best records of the year.
But it's nothing compared to the tongue-lashing I'd get if they knew how much I
love Timberlake's first record, Justified, which is one of the best
albums of the decade. (I'll find out soon enough, I guess.)